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Wednesday, 20 October 2010

There is a funny problem that I encounter with geraniums in my garden here in japan. The leafs suddenly start turning white.

My geraniums with white leafs

I don’t know what causes this, but this summer I had this problem with my geraniums. It all started on the new leaf sprouts. They started to come out all white, like if they where bleached or albino. Then some of the old leafs would start turning white, until eventually the whole plant got like that and then died. I lost my white geranium and almost the red one because of this. Luckily I got it under control before that happened.

I wasn’t sure what it was, but I have seen this in other much more developed geranium plants around Tokyo, so my guess was that this was something common here.

Geraniums in a garden at Yokohama

I researched a bit on-line and found out the problem is more common than I thought. I could not pinpoint a specific cause though. The best reason I found is that they had sort of a sun overdose. From what I found If they get to much direct sunlight the chloroplasts burn and die, so the plant cannot make photosynthesis . However I find this a bit hard to believe, since I never saw this in my garden in Mexico, where the sun rays are much stronger.

Still, when I moved my geranium bucket away from direct sunlight the problem seemed to recede. Now in the red geranium there are very few white leafs and new healthy sprouts start to come out. Also the new geranium is flowering and doesn't seem to have this problem. Maybe the ones in Mexico are used to the sun and developed some resistance.

I've never had that problem with the leaves turning white. You must have some strong sun in Japan. As for strawberries, I'll be covering mine up with straw soon to protect them this winter. I have 5 rows I share with my sister-in-law. It's a lot of work keeping them weeded but we sure do enjoy the berries.

I found it very strange, i don't believe they are burn from the sun either, there is not that much sun here at all, and like i said, I never saw this in Mexico, where the sun is for real. But weird enough, moving away to a bit of shadow solved the problem. Is the only thing i changed, same water, same soil.